VeChain snags Walmart China partnership, awakens the 'moon' crowd

According to this morning’s press release, Walmart China has teamed up with PWC and VeChain to establish a blockchain-based platform for tracking food through its supply chain.

The subtly-named ‘Walmart China Blockchain Traceability Platform’ will utilize VeChain’s Thor blockchain for tracking various categories of food, and has already implemented 23 product lines that have been tested and launched:

“The Platform is expected to scale by another 100 product lines by the end of the year”, boasts the announcement, “covering more than 10 product categories including fresh meat product, rice, mushrooms, cooking oil, etc.“

Unsurprisingly, the mention of ‘Walmart’ and ‘blockchain’ in the same sentence immediately drove the crypto crowd into a frenzy, with the story quickly catapulting to the very top of our Emerging Trends:

As expected, the news did a quick number on the price of VET, ballooning the coin to a 7-month high 79 Satoshi with a 32.8% spike over the past 24 hours and the biggest trading volumes the project’s ever seen:

Given that blockchain-supported tracking has already been implemented for 23 product lines, it might also be that this January-March spike in VeChain’s development activity bears connection (at least in part) to the beginning of the project’s cooperation with Walmart China:

As for the crowd reactions of the news, they’re...not what you may think.

We can split the general sentiment in a few distinctive categories:

Expectedly bullish:

• "A Walmart partnership is probably the top 5 story of adoption that the crypto space has ever seen"
• "Walmart already on board and the rest willl follow"
• "The huge partnership with Walmart is going to make it much more attractive to the institutional investors. Won't sell it for years."
• "This is only the beginning people. This is just Walmart China. Think the rest of Asian is next then more expansion."

Confused about the partnership’s mechanics:

• "So how does that walmart stuff work. Wallmart pays vechain foundation in fiat and vechain foundation buys vethors from open market. But, how this token is used for traceability?"
• "No I'm getting so basically, Walmart needs vet token to keep blockchain stable that customers need it to read supply history??? Something like that??"
• "Is Walmart buying tokens on the open market or did they get them as part of the project and integration?"
• "There are some real noobs in gear tonight good luck explaining vet"

Debating whether Walmart China is shoddy and/or small (?):

• "Not that the China market is small for Walmart... But relative to the states, it's very small. There are almost 5,000 Walmarts in the states compared to 430ish in China."
• "Walmart have been in China for 23 years, and they are a tiny operator in the market. Store expansion at 1% in 3 years is below inflation and pop expansion, so in real terms their business is contracting.”
• "Actually Walmart China are widely considered to have failed in their long-term plans and strategy because they have not actually catered to the very local nature of Chinese retail requirements - especially over consumable goods."
• "Not only is it only Walmart China but it's only being rolled out for food safety tracking. So it's even way smaller than that 4%. This absolutely looks better than it is."

And while the discussions about the news’ actual and potential impact are still ongoing, the speculative sentiment is very much on the ‘oh hell yeah’ side of the story:

• "Walmart has partnered with VECHAIN. Walmart is already tracking products with VECHAIN. This is a real life use case of a crypto blockchain. I think the price is going to explode."
• "I'm definitely bullish. My portfolio was already 70% VeChain, and I bumped that up today..."
• "This alone should in time put VeChain in the top 5 cryptos. Especially once we start seeing transactions from the rest of the partnerships take into action."
• "I've just bought some Vechain, could someone walk me through the wallet options?"

The mentions of 'Vet/Vechain adoption' have hit record highs:

...while the ‘VET moon’ crowd has come out strong as well:

An interesting side note to the story is how Vechain’s competitors are being affected by the news. For one, Waltonchain’s social word cloud has been overrun by the Walmart partnership announcement:

And there’s a palpable lack of optimism about the project’s future at the moment:

• "Wtc is dead at this point lol. classic example of a true china hustle"
• "Good job, Vechain. I thought wtc would be the One, but turns out that's a dog and VET is the one running off to the bank. Good job everyone."
• "Waltonchain is a joke now, Ive lost so much money investing in this project."
• "Shame I picked the shitcoin WTC over vechain. Well done to all of you who made the right choice."

While not as prominently, the news has also been seeping into OriginTrail’s mentions:

Although the general sentiment feels far less tempered by this point:

• "Any and all agreements that involve on boarding a blockchain based supply chain is incrediably bullish for trac"
• "How will TRAC respond?"
• "Only slippage trac holders will have will be on your tears when u fomo buy VET chasing profits"
• "Im not a fan of vet by a long shot which is why im concerned they were preffered to trac"

For now, the VET price action seems to have stabilized since the spike, and the coin’s been mostly trading in the $0.0094 range. Has the interim top been established or does VET have fuel for another leg up? Watch this space.